An Alternate History of Jonah Hex

 

I love cheap comics.  When I see a longbox at a con labeled “$1 each” or “10 for $5” or whatever, I dive right in.  My husband and I have acquired just about everything on our respective lists, so it’s fun to flip through these cheapie boxes and just grab whatever strikes our fancy.  Titles we’ve only seen ads for, crossover event tie-ins, old runs by great creators that we never read in full back in the day...at a buck or fifty cents apiece, how can you say no?

The majority of what I pick up is from the 1980s-1990s -- the era that I really got into comics -- so it’s fun to see the connections build up between this “new” material and the issues I read decades ago, especially when you come across characters guest starring in other people’s books.  The picture in your head of what particular eras in Marvel and DC history were like at that time expands greatly, so that you can see all the intersections of their myriad lives and stories and such instead of a narrow view of just, say, what Batman is doing month after month.  And sometimes...sometimes it makes me wonder what it would’ve been like if Jonah Hex was truly a part of the DC Universe.

“What do you mean?” I hear you saying.  “Jonah Hex is part of it!  He always has been!”

Well, not exactly: Jonah exists in the DCU, but rarely does he mingle with the modern-day heroes.  His purview is mainly the Old West, with a brief dabble in the post-apocalypse of 2050.  This has long been a blessing and a curse for him, and likely contributes to why it’s so dang hard for him to maintain a monthly title.  The stories are awesome, yes, but they have little-to-no effect on the day-to-day dealings of the DCU, so I reckon there are probably comics fans who feel his stories don’t matter in the long run.  Part of my motivation for writing Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray (which I haven’t worked on for years...sorry, I’ll get back to it at some point) was to let Jonah butt heads with some long-underwear folk on a regular basis and see what sort of trouble he could get into, but that’s based in the DCU circa 2010.  What if he’d integrated decades earlier, so that he was involved in some of the biggest events in DC history?

About seven years ago, somebody over on the forums for The Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe began a thread where posters made up solicits for books that didn't exist or were continuations of titles that were cancelled.  For example, if Crisis on Infinite Earths didn't happen, what sort of books would DC be doing?  I liked the idea, and considered contributing some fake ones for HEX, under the premise of what the book might've looked like after issue #18 if it'd kept going without Fleisher around.  Under another writer/artist team, it could've become something radically different, like what occurred when Alan Moore took over Swamp Thing (which was a low-selling book when they gave it to him).  HEX would still be a sci-fi book set in the future, yes, but it might've become a good one!  More than that, it might’ve turned into something we’ve never actually seen: a monthly Jonah Hex title that survived into the 1990s and beyond, dodging cancellations due to an ever-growing fanbase and, eventually, full integration into the modern DCU.  It would have been markedly different from the Jonah Hex comics we got (to be sure, the Vertigo era as we know it would likely never exist in such a scenario), but so long as the stories were good and stayed true to the character, I think it would’ve been enjoyable.

But what would that imaginary title look like?  Who'd work on it?  How would it tie in with some of the big DC events that occurred since 1987?  Intrigued with the notion, I literally crunched the numbers, figuring out when certain landmark issues would have been released, along with which issues would coincide with specific DC crossover events (not to mention those themed annuals that were popular in the 1990s), then filled in a few blanks, including what might’ve occurred in the first half-dozen issues following Fleisher’s departure.  Only rules I adhered to were keeping everything up to HEX #18 as canon, and keeping creators for this imaginary book within their proper eras (e.g. the late Michael Turner’s career falls between 1995-2008, so if I wanted to pretend like he did a special cover or something, I wouldn’t be able to do that at any point before or after his actual comics career).

I posted my made-up solicits on the forum and asked other fans if they’d like to add any more.  Sadly, only one of my fellow Hex-nuts, Henry Joseph Feakes, contributed any ideas, and the thread soon faded into the background.  The idea of it, however, stayed with me, occasionally rearing its head whenever I’d read some old event comic I’d acquired from those cheapie boxes.  It’s a fun little “what if” to noodle with, but far too large an undertaking for a fanfic, especially with having so many other projects already in progress, so I doubted it would ever expand beyond those quick little write-ups I did in 2015.

Then I realized April Fool’s Day is fast approaching...

And this year is Jonah’s 50th anniversary...

Plus it’s been 35 years since the cancellation of HEX...

All of which added up to the perfect excuse to dig up some of those fake solicits and repost them here, along with some freshly-made ones and a few notes so you can imagine along with me what could have been.  I might come back to this from time to time and add onto the list, but I reckon what’s here already should be enough to inspire some more “what ifs” in your mind...and should you also feel so inclined as to share them with others, drop me a line and I’ll add your ideas to the list as well.

Okay, kids, let’s see what’s on the imaginary spinner rack...

******

HEX #19 (March 1987)

Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
The team behind ATARI FORCE takes over HEX! After the shocking final pages of the previous issue, Hex and Stiletta are searching for answers. How can Jonah be dead in the past if he's alive in the future? Does this truly mean he'll go home one day, and if so, when will it happen...and could he possibly stay in the future instead and avoid his death?

HEX #20 (April 1987)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
The paradoxes keep piling up as Hex and Stiletta unearth more information about Hex's possible death in the past. Why are they finding records of events prior to 1875 that Jonah doesn't remember? There's one place left that might contain the answers they seek, but do they dare venture into the ruins of the Needle to find it?

HEX #21(May 1987)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Reinhold Borsten -- Stiletta's father and the man responsible for bringing Hex into the future -- is still alive, and hell-bent on killing them both! Even if they survive the assault, the shock of learning the truth about how the gunfighter ended up in the year 2050 might kill Hex instead!

HEX #22 (June 1987)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Once upon a time, there were multiple Earths. Then a Crisis occurred, leaving only one Earth intact...but not before the Jonah Hex of Earth-2 was brought to the future of Earth-1. Can Hex cope with the knowledge that the Earth he was born on no longer exists, and that the life he thought belonged to him alone is being lived in the past by someone else?

HEX #23 (July 1987)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
January 1st, 2051: A new year and a new beginning for Jonah Hex and Stiletta. They're leaving Seattle behind as they head off to build a new life together, far from the ashes of the old. But can happiness truly be found in a world scarred by nuclear war?

SECRET ORIGINS #21 (Dec. 1987)
This issue brings you a double-dose of Jonah Hex! First up, Michael Fleisher and Gray Morrow return to tell one more tale of the Hex of the Old West, as well as the final fate of Emmylou Hartley! Then Gerry Conway and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez fill you in on the Hex of Earth-2, one of the last survivors of that doomed world, who is currently residing in the year 2051.

 

HEX #29  (Jan. 1988)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

A MILLENNIUM tie-in!  Stiletta thought she’d finally licked all the physical and mental problems caused by the “enhancements” forced upon her by the Combine...but that was before she and her beau Jonah Hex crossed paths with an amnesiac known only as “Hunter”.  Now she’s of two minds -- literally! -- and Hex may not be able to bring her back to her old self this time!

HEX #30  (Feb. 1988)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

A MILLENNIUM tie-in!  It’s bounty hunter versus Manhunter as Hex has to not only stop an ancient alien program from overwriting every last bit of Stiletta’s humanity, but keep it from unleashing that same fate upon the entire New West Coast!

 

HEX #31 (March 1988)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Stiletta has been freed from the influence of Manhunter tech, but at the cost of all her memories prior to the bombs dropping.  Now Jonah has to figure out how to explain a future he barely understands himself to a young woman who doesn’t even remember him.

 

HEX #32 (April 1988)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Before she was Stiletta, she was a high-school senior named Stella Borsten.  Then the world was engulfed in nuclear fire, forcing her to become the sort of person who could survive the nightmare that followed.  Now she’s back to square one and has to rebuild herself all over again...and lucky for her, she’s got Jonah Hex -- one of the fiercest survivors in the past 200 years -- as her teacher this time around!

*this entry suggested by Dwayne Hendrickson*
HEX/JUDGE DREDD: Mega-City Madhouse (One-shot, Dec. 1992)
Writers Alan Grant and John Wagner -- who brought you last year’s BATMAN/JUDGE DREDD crossover -- are at it again, this time teaming with artist Brian Bolland to deliver a tale that just might break all of reality!  The Sisters of Death attempt to reestablish a link to Mega-City One, this time using an alternate Earth as a staging ground between dimensions...and the one they pick happens to be home to Jonah Hex!  When the two apocalyptic landscapes begin to bleed into one another, the results ain’t pretty, and it’s up to Hex and Dredd to stop the Sisters before both 2053 and 2114 become a dimension-devouring Mega-Necropolis!

HEX #100 (Dec. 1993)
This extra-large issue celebrates Jonah Hex’s past, present, and future, courtesy of writers and artists throughout Hex history!  Original creators John Albano and Tony DeZuniga spin an Old West yarn about Jonah’s long-lost brother (!), Michael Fleisher and Russ Heath give us another glimpse of the elderly Jonah Hex of Earth-1, Gerry Conway and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez fill us in on what’s happened to the town of Sanctuary since Hex and Stiletta’s departure, and Joe R. Lansdale and Tim Truman wrap up their “Gone to Texas” storyarc just in time to pass the reins over to the incoming team of Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra!  Plus pinups by classic Hex artists Vicente Alcazar, Mark Texeira, Keith Giffen, and Dan Jurgens!

HEX #109 (Sept. 1994)
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Carlos Ezquerra
A ZERO HOUR tie-in! Still mourning the loss of Stiletta, the Hex of 2054 crosses paths with the Jonah Hex of 1879! Knowing that his alternate self is fated to end up as a stuffed corpse, will Hex give in to temptation and warn him, or let the past play out like it did the first time around?

I’m not crazy enough to rewrite Zero Hour just to insert Hex, but suffice it to say that both versions of him would end up getting mushed together (kinda like what happened to Hawkman) and Hex would end up stranded in 1994, as we see below...

HEX #0 (Oct. 1994)
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Carlos Ezquerra
Thanks to the events of ZERO HOUR, both the nuclear holocaust of 2045and Jonah's death in 1904 have been erased from history. There's only one Jonah Hex now, with an unwritten future ahead of him...and it starts in the modern-day DCU!

HEX #110 (Nov. 1994)
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Carlos Ezquerra
When you're a time-displaced gunfighter with a talent for hunting down the worst criminals society has to offer, where do you go to ply your trade in the late-20th Century? They say Gotham is lovely this time of year...

*this entry co-written by Henry Joseph Feakes*
HEX Annual #4 (1994) 
The ELSEWORLDS theme continues as we meet Lieutenant Jonah Hex, a badly-scarred Vietnam vet in 1972 who’s trying to reconnect with his old life back in “the world”.  Too bad that old life involves a larcenous motorcycle gang whose leader, the sadistic Quentin Turnbull, ain’t happy that his son Jeb died instead of Jonah.  Get ready for tale full of bullets, bloodshed, and bellbottoms that only manly-man Beau Smith and tough-guy Tim Truman could tell!

*this entry suggested by Dwayne Hendrickson*
HEX OF FUTURE PAST (One-shot, April 1996)
Writer: David Michelinie
Artist: Ron Frenz
The weirdest Amalgam hero, now in his own magazine!  Between his entire platoon dying at Fort Charlotte and the horrific scars he bore from the incident, Matt “Hex” Hawk was believed by his fellow Confederate soldiers to be cursed...and after a group of freedom fighters with access to a time machine plucked Matt off the battlefield and dragged him to the nightmare world of 2050, he began to think the other Rebs were right!  Nowadays, he’s part of a different rebellion, fighting alongside his new gal Stilettocat -- as well as other time-displaced soldiers like Vietnam vet Stanley “Bishop” Harris and Soviet-era cyborg Ivan “Metallus” Rasputin -- in an effort to stop Bolivar Borsten and his army of Tri-Sentinels from conquering the world.  It’s a whole new war, but he’s the same old HEX!

HEX #134 (Nov. 1996)
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Carlos Ezquerra
A FINAL NIGHT tie-in!  Jonah Hex has faced the end of the world multiple times, so he ain’t too concerned with this current go-round.  Still, that doesn’t mean he’s gonna sit idly by when a squirrelly preacher tries to talk his flock into a suicide pact.  Can a natural-born pessimist like Hex convince a church full of scared people to hold onto hope for a miracle just a little longer?

HEX Annual #7 (1997)
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: John McCrea
The PULP HEROES theme leads Jonah Hex back to his Weird Western Tales roots!  After receiving a mysterious message, Jonah travels to an Indian reservation that’s fighting the state government over possession of a literal hole in the ground.  What’s the secret of the Devil’s Well, and why was Hex willing to kill a man 125 years ago keep that secret?  Garth Ennis has come up with a yarn so tangled it takes two artists to tell it, with the legendary Gil Kane working in the past and Ennis’s Hitman cohort John McCrea laboring away in the here-and-now!

HEX Annual #8 (1998)
The GHOSTS theme has come to haunt Jonah Hex!  Garth Ennis and Mike McKone conjure up a centuries-spanning saga that reaches from the antebellum plantations of Virginia to the modern-day halls of our nation’s capitol.  The spirit of Jonah’s long-dead friend, Jeb Turnbull, refuses to rest until the bounty hunter stops the machinations of a descendant of the Turnbull clan.  In doing so, Jonah is forced to confront his part in the family’s long history of white supremacy and political manipulation.  For the first time ever, Hex’s pre-Civil War connection with the Turnbulls is revealed!

 

As with Zero Hour, I’m not about to rewrite Infinite Crisis, but I do think it’d be interesting to get him involved in the Rann/Thanagar War, because parallels could be drawn to his previous wartime experience, and also it’s an excuse to shoot Jonah into space (which some non-Hex fans believe actually happened in HEX, so we may as well have a go at it).  And if we get involved in Infinite Crisis, then there’s the inevitable fallout of...

 

HEX #247 (May 2006)
Writer/Artist: Dave Gibbons

ONE YEAR LATER!  On the fringes of wild space, there is no law.  Slavery, degradation, and depravity run rampant.  One of the worst places is the planet Kobalt, where skull-crushers from all around come to challenge Lord Gruell’s stable of pit fighters.  Many enter the pit, but if they have to go up against the fighter known only as Hex, they never leave!

 

HEX #248 (June 2006)
Writer/Artist: Dave Gibbons

After a year of living in chains, Jonah Hex has had enough!  The bounty hunter is determined to make Lord Gruell pay for all the deaths he’s orchestrated, even if it means Hex dies himself!

 

HEX #249 (July 2006)
Writer/Artist: Dave Gibbons

Hex and his cohorts are free, but for how long?  Kobalt is a cold, unforgiving world, and Lord Gruell is hot on their tails!  After all the wild adventures Jonah has been through in his life, this one may turn out to be his last!

 

HEX #250 (August 2006)
Writer/Artist: Dave Gibbons

A double-size issue for a double celebration!  Though grateful for their newfound freedom, the former slaves of Lord Gruell are curious as to who Jonah Hex really is.  Settle in as the bounty hunter opens up about the long, strange journey of his life, from the 19th Century to now!

 ******

And that’s all I’ve cooked up so far.  A few more ideas sprung to mind this morning, but I don’t have the time to jot them up at the moment.  If this post gets a strong response, I’ll add them over the weekend...and remember, if you have any ideas of your own you’d like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!